


Floating, Flying

by shadoedseptmbr



Series: Flipping Coins [2]
Category: Dragon Age
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-26
Updated: 2012-03-26
Packaged: 2017-11-02 13:50:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/369679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadoedseptmbr/pseuds/shadoedseptmbr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On either side of Telling Tales, Hawke lets slip a bit of her story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Floating, Flying

**Author's Note:**

> Floating is before Telling Tales, maybe a week or so after Hawke meets Fenris.  
> Flying is after Telling Tales, but not long.

Floating....

 

He wouldn’t follow her any longer, Fenris decided. 

Hawke claimed she had brought them up to Sundermount to deliver a package. She had brought them to elves. And the elves had shown them farther up the mountain. A blood mage had shown them the path. The little witch had been utterly nonchalant about the peril she placed them all in and even if Hawke had been unhappy about the idea, she had still allowed it. 

Then the _other_ witch. Who turned into a dragon. And now the blood mage was continuing on with them back to Kirkwall and Hawke and Isabela and perhaps even Varric treated her and her foolish questions with fond amusement. 

Clearly, Hawke drew mages to her like mages themselves drew demons. This was no place for him. She could take care of herself, it was plain. She didn’t need someone to watch her back, no matter how brightly she had grinned at him when she said it was wonderful to have a broadsword to fight with again. 

Now that they were down the mountain, though, Hawke’s comfort level seemed to have dropped. She had stopped listening to the blood mage and had pulled out a red kerchief to swab sweat from her face. 

“It’s hotter off the mountain.” The witch was chattering again and Fenris glared at her.

“It is that.” Hawke agreed in a short tone and drew out her waterskin. She tipped it up and Fenris could see Isabela eyeing the long white throat of their leader.

“You do look hot, Hawke.” Isabela purred and the other woman flicked her kerchief at the pirate. 

“Too bloody hot for that. I miss Ferelden.” Varric had caught up to them and he nodded to her when she lifted her eyes to the dwarf, silently asking if he was keeping up alright. 

She took off down the path again and, like tails of a kite, they followed only to find her stock-still and staring out over the coast. The walls of the path had crumbled away to reveal the coast line spreading before them, perhaps a dozen feet down the cliffside.

There was a breeze here, refreshing and not smelling of fish as did the waterside in Kirkwall. Hawke stood like a statue, eyes on the water and then narrowing to look down at the not quite vertical cliff. Fenris was about to mutter something about enthrallment when she spoke.

“To the Void with this,” and slid over the leading edge of the cliff, slipping and scooting down through the sparse shrubbery clinging to the eroding soil.

“Where is she going?” Fenris spoke mostly from shock and looked at Varric. The dwarf had known Hawke the longest of the four. 

“I’ve got no idea, Broody.” Varric shrugged. The witch was picking her way down the newly broken path and Isabela had followed. They watched for a minute and then tagged along behind the women on Hawke’s path.

Sweaty and now filthy, Fenris landed on the beach to find Hawke staring at the water again. “Hawke, have you lost what little sense you have?”

“Yup.” Suddenly she dropped her daggers and tore at the buckles of the black leather of her jerkin, while kicking her boots off. 

“Hawke?” Varric asked. This was decidedly odd behavior and Fenris started to wonder if one of the witches had cast a spell or if the rogue had struck her head. 

“Yeah, just a minute.” For all the world as if she wasn’t stripping in front of them. Her jerkin was gone and a belt and she hooked her thumbs in her trousers. Isabela cackled then and dropped to the sand to unbuckle her own boots and the witch was shrugging out of her mail.

Hawke strode to the water’s edge while shucking her rough linen undertunic and Fenris was granted a look a white shoulders with…wings drawn in grey ink spread across them and a slim waist flaring into ...He looked away as she splashed into the waves.

Merrill followed, “Ooh, its not as cold as I thought it would be.”

“It’s still cold as a witch’s tit!” Isabella shrieked. There was a lot of female flesh on display, Fenris realized as he resolutely stared at Varric.

“I haven’t been wet up to _my_ tits since before Ostagar!” Hawke shouted before she plunged into the oncoming wave.

Fenris coughed as Varric mouthed ‘wet up to my…’ “Bianca and I are going over there….somewhere.” He waved the crossbow vaguely as he wandered away towards a rock shelf. 

Fenris thought perhaps he might have to stay. Hawke didn’t seem to have a shred of self-preservation. And someone had to keep an eye on the mages.

 

\------------------------------000000000000000---------------------------------

Flying... 

Hawke couldn’t seem to help it. Every time they came to the Docks, she headed to this stairway. Why was there even a stairway here? If you wanted to walk into the water, it would be perfect, but who would walk into this? It was fetid, filled with bilge from the docked ships and whatever else Kirkwall felt free to dump here. Trash, old flowers, dead fish, dead people. 

There were birds though. If you looked out over the water, ignored the ships, ignored Isabela cooing over the ships. Ignored the bloody Gallows looming on the horizon. Looked up and there were birds in the sky. Gulls and pipers and pelicans and, occasionally, a hawk blown in from a storm. 

She walked down the steps, so that if the tide shifted slightly her boots would be soaked. She shouldn’t get her boots wet. There wasn’t money enough for a spare pair and she’d be stuck inside Gamlen’s hovel until they dried. Fenris went barefoot everywhere. She should ask him sometime how he’d toughened his feet up enough for that. She’d grown up barefoot, but she doesn’t think she could walk that way all the time, fight that way. 

Not once has anyone ever asked her why she did this. Came to the docks and stared at the birds. They just hung back, talked amongst themselves until she came back to them. She imagined Merrill would ask. Merrill asked about everything. But not this. Today though, Fenris had padded up behind her. 

Something had changed since the night he followed her home from the Hanged Man. He’d followed her home and just lurked in the shadows across from Gamlen’s until she’d stood from her perch on the porch and gone inside. He didn’t know she’d realized he was there. But it had been nice. She’d been able to ignore where she was for a few minutes and just retreat, pull away from the world from having to be aware every minute of who was there and where someone might leap from the dark. Fenris had watched for her. He knew how to watch for threats from the dark. She trusted him enough to let him. When had that happened?

Silently, he waited, a few steps farther up. Maybe he wanted to know why. Or maybe he was trying to get her to move along so that he didn’t have to smell rotting fish any longer. 

“When I was about fourteen I started a trap line. I walked it every morning and every night, about two miles from the house, where the woods started. It was always quiet and I ran it along a stream, so I could hear the water.”

“The house was small, you know. Father always meant to add a new room or two. But we were used to piling on top of one another. And it was warmer in the winter.” 

He was listening. He had moved down another step. 

“I could walk the traps, though, everyday. So I did. Sometimes there were rabbits. Or mink. Usually they were empty, but I walked anyway. I got to the end of the line, late in Cloudreach, and there was a girl there. ‘Bout my age, maybe a year or so younger. A Chasind, I think. Dark hair, weird eyes. She didn’t see me. I’d been sneaking, practicing.”

He knew how quietly she moved. She even fought quietly, slipping through her enemies like a wraith. She could feel his eyes on her back.

“She was holding a feather. It was brown and gold and white, from a wing, I think. And she said something. The air…shifted and where she’d been standing there was a bird, a wee little falcon with gold eyes. It hovered there for a minute and then just…up. Pumped its wings and went up and up and then it was gone.”

She could feel the growl he let loose, in her chest. “Yes, it was magic.” He couldn’t see her face, so she went ahead and rolled her eyes. “But I remember thinking, ‘If I could do _that_ ’, if I could do that I’d never care about anything else, ever.”

His eyes were still on her back, but she didn’t know that he was thinking of the wings in grey ink that spread across her shoulders. Or that he was wondering what it would feel like to spread his hands across them, stretch his fingers out on the span. 

She turned, snap quick, and startled, he stepped back up the stairs. “I can’t though.” She grinned at him, reassuring, almost. “It’s just nice to watch them, and know they can.” 

He nodded at her. The far away look she’d been carrying in her eyes since the night at the Hanged Man was gone and she was here, again. Lighter, somehow. It was almost worth the rotting fish smell that would cling to them after they left the wharf. 

“We should move on.”

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote these together and couldn't separate them, even if it made more sense long term story wise. And hey, if anyone wants to trade beta duties, I'm up for that. I can't convince any of my other fandom betas to pick up on DA.


End file.
